{"id":2877,"date":"2005-05-24T09:03:08","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T13:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/05\/24\/2877.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:50:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:50:04","slug":"above-the-fold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/05\/24\/above-the-fold\/","title":{"rendered":"Above the fold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well, and as far as I can tell, the big news of the day is that Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor and Prescilla Owen get lifetime appointments to the federal appeals court, from which it will be hard to describe them as ‘unqualified’, should some lunatic decide to nominate them to the Supreme Court.\n

Well, no, the big news of the day was three new car bombings, killing thirty-three people and wounding a hundred and twenty, and another today, killing three of our fellows, which has got to be bigger news than some legislative procedural infighting and the confirmation of a few bad judges. Still, if by big news<\/I>, we mean news printed above the fold on the front page of major newspapers, then, no, the car bombs were not the big news of the day.\n

I am not, actually, at all happy with the compromise worked out in the Senate. Of course, I’ve never really thought about this as being about the filibuster, so the fact that the filibuster has been saved is, to me, a minor point. I’ve thought about this as being about the judges, and the people I think of as the most troublesome look to be confirmed. I expect some troubling decisions to come down from those courts; that means more to me than the filibuster.\n

On the other hand, some of the lefty bloggists have made some good points, if a bit grudgingly, in favor of the compromise. Or if not in favor of the compromise as such, at least pointing out that the silver lining may be as big as the cloud. Mark Schmitt, over at the Decembrist, writes<\/a>:\n

If the goal of liberals is to block a truly extremist Supreme Court nominee, block Social Security privatization and more tax cuts, block Bolton, and then begin to shift the debate back to issues of economic security, health care, global leadership, etc., the best possible thing that can happen is for the White House and its agents, such as Frist, to lose their control of all the levers of power in Congress. That's indisputably what this deal does, and for that, I'll learn to love it.<\/blockquote>\n

Other people (sorry, I can’t remember which) have pointed out that the Republican leadership defined the issue for public consumption as being about the filibuster, and the Democrats (foolishly, I thought) allowed that to be the definition of the issue, and if that’s the issue, then the Democrats won. That’s likely to help over the next two years. Also, if this really does put paid to the presidential hopes of Senators Frist and McCain, well, that ain’t all bad. It doesn’t get a Democrat in the White House, but it doesn’t hurt.\n

As far as I can tell, the Democrats get two things out of this. They block two bad nominations, and they get the Republican’s promise to behave later. Now, it’s almost certain that Our Only President will nominate somebody as bad as those two, possibly those two themselves, to the appeals courts, and it’s very likely that Our Only President will nominate somebody truly dreadful to the Supreme Court. If that happens, and if the Democrats take up their responsibility to block those nominations, and if the Republicans who signed on to the agreement maintain it, then something good will have come out of it. Likely enough, though, any actual use of the filibuster to block any nomination, no matter how outrageous, will be met with feigned shock and the sudden discovery that the agreement has already been violated by the Democrats. Surprise! You been punk’d!\n

On the other hand, I do believe in compromise. On the other other hand, I’d prefer to compromise with honest people. Some of my Gentle Readers, I know, feel that compromise with this Republican leadership is a fool’s errand, and I have a lot of sympathy with that. On the other hand, refusing to compromise isn’t exactly productive either. One way or another, if there’s reason to be cross with the Democrats for accepting a compromise which allows some bad nominees to be confirmed, there’s reason to be frothing-at-the-mouth furious at the leadership that nominated them and supports them.\n

And, in with all of this, is the fact that the whole filibuster business just wasn’t the big news of the day.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, and as far as I can tell, the big news of the day is that Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor and Prescilla Owen get lifetime appointments to the federal appeals court, from which it will be hard to describe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17421,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions\/17421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}